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Go after johns to reduce sex trafficking

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Tuesday March 4, 2014 9:11 AM

Ohio House Bill 130, the End Demand Act, seeks to reduce child sex trafficking in the only
proven way: by targeting the customers who make child sex traffickers rich.

Shockingly, the Ohio Senate seems reluctant to target johns, the men who employ prostituted
persons.

The bill would make it a felony to offer money to a child in exchange for sex. It would create
an affirmative defense for sex-trafficking victims to prostitution charges if they can show
evidence that they have been exploited.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee found this questionable. Members asked why a 22-year-old
man making a pass at a 17-year-old girl should be considered a felon. In my opinion, inviting a
child into prostitution should most definitely be a felony.

The committee asked why the affirmative defense could be used even when a trafficker had not
been convicted, and if that meant it could be a “get-out-of-jail-free card for common
prostitutes."

The affirmative defense requires a sex-trafficking victim to provide evidence she was forced
into prostitution, but it would be ridiculous to require her to arrest and convict her trafficker,
too.

And what is a “common prostitute,” exactly? According to data gathered by the Franklin County
Municipal Court, more than 90 percent of prostitutes are being forced into sex work by pimps and
fit the legal definition of sex-trafficking victims.

It was difficult to ignore the power dynamics as a young woman testified before eight powerful
men about men victimizing young women.

We’re going to need to change a lot more than Ohio law to combat sex slavery; we’re going to
need to create a society where buying a girl’s body is universally condemned by our legislature and
society as a whole. If every Ohioan wakes up tomorrow and decides not to purchase sex, sex
trafficking will end tomorrow.